MyCounselor Says: Is Pre-Engagement Counseling Valuable?

Question asked for Jaxon

Question:

Video Transcript

(Transcript is generated by a software and may have discrepancies from the video.)

Cassie

Welcome to my counselor online. I’m Cassie and this is MyCounselor Says. That’s where you submit your questions and I tracked down one of our awesome therapists and get them to answer your question, so today our question comes from Jaxon, and here’s the question:

“Is pre-engagement counseling something that you would advise to do? And do you offer that??”

Let’s go find out what MyCounselor Says.

Josh

Josh Spurlock here with my counselor online answering a question from Jaxon is pre engagement counseling, something that you would advise to do and do we offer at my counselor online.

Yes, definitely. The further along in relationship that you get, the more difficult it is to break things off, and the more difficult that is to be objective about the other person in the relationship.

And so when people wait to do any sort of counseling until their

Days or weeks before the wedding. While that certainly has great value in sending their marriage up for success. It doesn’t have very much value in terms of really evaluating rather or not. The marriage should happen.

There’s so much momentum at that juncture in pressure from money that has been spent obligations or expectations that have been set with family.

As so much pressure to continue forward with the relationship that it makes it very difficult to acknowledge in take action around

Serious red flags are things that really need to be addressed before the wedding in order to determine whether or not we should even get married or not.

And so pre engagement counseling can be very helpful because it’s earlier in the process and really allows us to have the outside eyes.

Of a professional counselor who has worked with lots of marriages and relationships and can identify the things that are going to be issues in your relationship down the road.

Bring them to surface and allow us to deal with it now.

Hopefully in the process of doing that we work through them. We understand how to navigate them in a healthy way. And it helps a firm and confirm that their relationship is

Going to be a good thing for us moving forward into engagement.

But sometimes an equally as valuable is coming to the conclusion that this is these are not going to be things that we can address because either one or the other isn’t willing or able to do so.

Or for other reasons that are outside of our control in that not moving forward with the relationship further is the best thing for both of us.

In to make that decision before we’re further along in the process where it’s really hard to step back from the relationship

It also gives us the opportunity to postpone some things to take a little bit slower to address concerns to make sure that we’re able to work through those things before we get our stuff into the high pressure situation that engagement can be.

Cassie

Well, thank you Josh for answering this question and Jaxon thanks for your question. And if you have a question you can ask one of our awesome therapists by submitting your question on our website. We’ll get your question answered and post the answer in an upcoming edition of our weekly e-newsletter and on this webpage.